Sergio Perez convinced he can challenge Max Verstappen for F1 title

SERGIO Perez’s accomplished victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has confirmed – in his mind at least – that he is a genuine rival to his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen for the world championship this year.

Not everyone is as convinced as the Mexican – not even his team principal, judging by Christian Horner’s comments afterwards – but Perez certainly laid down a marker around the streets of Baku.

“It’s a long year ahead,” Perez said after shrugging off everything the two-time champion could throw at him and controlling the race around the streets of this city on the shores of the Caspian Sea. “We are in the fight.”

It was a highly consummate performance from Perez. Arguably – even if he was reluctant to say so himself – the best of his six Formula 1 victories.
Perez did, as Horner said, “get a little bit lucky with the safety car” but, once in the lead, he controlled the race. Throughout a tense grand prix, with both drivers pushing to the limit throughout, Verstappen had no answer for him.

2-2 between Verstappen and Perez
Perez’s win, together with his victory in Saudi Arabia two races ago, makes the score two-all between the Red Bull drivers so far this season.

The six-point lead Verstappen has is down entirely to a difficult qualifying day for Perez at the previous race in Australia, where technical issues left him down the grid and required a comeback drive. It was not by chance that Perez mentioned several times over the weekend that he and the team needed to avoid weekends like that.

There were no errors from Perez or his side of the garage this time, and he left Azerbaijan for the 15-hour flight to next weekend’s race in Miami with two wins under his belt – one in Saturday’s shorter ‘sprint’ and another in the grand prix – to make it an almost perfect weekend.

And while it is true to say Perez was gifted the lead by the timing of the safety car, that is not the same as saying he lucked into the win.

Perez closed in on Verstappen once both were past the pole-winning Ferrari of Charles Leclerc and was putting him under pressure. Verstappen radioed that he was starting to run into tyre problems.

By the end of lap nine, Perez was just 0.6 seconds behind and felt he was on the point of passing his team-mate by using the DRS overtaking aid. At this point, Red Bull stepped in and stopped him getting the chance by calling Verstappen in for new tyres next time around.

The idea was to keep Verstappen in the lead but it backfired. Red Bull had seen the Alpha Tauri of Nyck de Vries in the run-off area at Turn Six but miscalculated.

They thought the incident was not enough to bring out the safety car, felt the Dutchman’s car was undamaged and he would reverse back on to the track, so brought Verstappen in, rather than waiting another lap for a safety car. (BBC Sport)